One of the shelves had less on it than the others. At either end rested a candleholder, long since overrun with many colors of melted wax until they were nothing but mounds, like a honeybee Vesuvius. Books, mostly paperback romances, and various small and feminine articles took up the rest of the shelf, but for where a bleached human skull sat in the middle. I picked up a pencil and rapped it against the shelf. "Bob. Bob, wake up. Work to be done."

Twin points of orange and gold light kindled in the shadows of the skull's eye sockets, and grew brighter as I went about the room lighting half a dozen candles and a kerosene lamp. The skull rattled a little, and then said, "It's only a few hours from dawn, and you're just starting up? What gives?"

I started getting out beakers and vials and a small alcohol burner. "More trouble," I said. "It's been one hell of a day." I told Bob the Skull about the television studio, the vampire's challenge, the hit man, the missing Shroud, and the plague-filled corpse.

"Wow. You don't do things halfway, do you, Harry?"

"Advise now; critique later. I'm going to look into things and whip up a potion or two, and you're going to help."

"Right," Bob said. "Where do you want to start?"

"With Ortega. Where is my copy of the Accords?"

"Cardboard box." Bob said. "Third shelf, on the bottom row, behind the pickling jars."

I found the box and pawed through it until I had found a vellum scroll tied shut with a white ribbon. I opened it and peered down at the handwritten calligraphy. It started off with the word Insomuch, and the syntax got more opaque from there.

"I can't make heads or tails of this," I said. "Where's the section about duels?"

"Fifth paragraph from the end. You want the Cliff's Notes version?"

I rolled the scroll shut again. "Hit me."

"It's based on Code Duello," Bob said. "Well, technically it's based on much older rules that eventually inspired the Code Duello, but that's just chickens and eggs. Ortega is the challenger, and you're the challenged."

"I know that. I get to pick the weapons and the ground, right?"

"Wrong," Bob said. "You pick the weapons, but he gets to choose the time and location."

"Damn," I muttered. "I was going to take high noon out in a park somewhere. But I guess I can just say that we'll duel with magic."

"If it's one of the available choices. It almost always is."

"Who decides?"

"The vampires and the Council will pick from a list of neutral emissaries. The emissary decides."

I nodded. "So if I don't have it as an option I'm screwed, right? I mean, magic, wizard, kind of my bag."